and red gravel peeping out from the abounding foliage. How the birds flit in and out of the woods and bushes, as though conscious that here they dwell in security, on inaccessible heights or in impervious thickets. Why do not the birds migrate hither from all parts of the kingdom? Here grim winter loses most of his terrors. The whole place lies half asleep in the sunshine; and every hundred yards or so you feel inclined to lie down on the soft slopes of turf and give yourself up to indolent repose. And why not? A holiday ramble should be enjoyment, not taskwork. Recreation comes by quiet as well as by exercise; so feast your eyes on the romantic scene and its teeming verdure; or on the sea spread out there on the left, so deeply blue, that you doubt if even the Mediterranean can be bluer. Often as I have read Milton's Il Penseroso, never seemed it so sweet and spiritual as on that sunshiny afternoon, loitering there "in glimmering bowers and glades," with nothing to disturb. Save the fluttering of the birds, the chance bleating of a sheep, and the hum of bees, the silence was unbroken. And I was there alone, for the momentary glimpse of a hat and bonnet moving behind the bushes in the distance could hardly be called an intrusion.

By-and-by a wall, which shuts off the lower slope on the left, slants across, and your way is stopped; but coming out from among the bushes you see a narrow archway in the barrier, and there runs the path between a wall and a bank, completely barricaded in places by

long overhanging grasses and creepers, and brambles that pluck off your cap as you pass. But there are gaps which you may get through from time to time, and look back on the cliffs and out upon the sea. An unseen rill makes a pleasant noise tumbling among the rocks; and if you go down to the beach by the path that turns off at the old lime-kiln, you will see the pretty little cascade in its lower leap; or, continuing onwards, you perceive that while the cliffs recede the path descends, till it falls into one of those amphitheatre-like hollows so frequent along the coast, with space enough for a cottage, an orchard, and a little field. Pause here for a few minutes and look round on the wooded heights, and the foreground falling away to the pebbly shore. While crossing the field to the stile opposite, a man who was digging told me I could go no farther along the undercliff, the path soon disappeared, everything was let to grow just as it liked, no one could get through the tangle nor go round it. There was Pinney, he said, and there Whitelands, pointing to the two sides of the amphitheatre; strangers came as far as here, then they either went back, or turned up a lane on the right, which led to another, and that to another, then across the "barton" of a farm, and on again to Dowlands and the great landslip. I was incredulous as to the impossibility of finding the way along the undercliff, notwithstanding the rustic's earnest assurance that I should be all night in getting to Axmouth, and kept on: I could take to the lanes in case of failure. True

enough the path soon disappeared, and brambles and briars had it all their own way; and who would grudge to Nature a little space for running riot in a land where she has to submit to so many restraints? It was, however, possible to circumvent the thorny barriers, though not without labour and rough scrambling: exertion well recompensed by the sight of wild solitudes and rich, hanging woods. After a couple of miles I came to another break, and wishing my first view of the landslip to be from above, I there turned up a lane on the right, crossed a "barton," as the walled farm-yard is named, passed the old-fashioned farm-house of Dowlands, and taking the first lane on the left, found myself presently looking down on the undercliff, about two miles beyond the opening where I had diverged. Here the view is even more picturesque than that which I have endeavoured to describe, the cliffs are higher, the ups and downs greater, some of the sunken masses are mountain ranges in miniature, others rise bold as an acropolis with rugged walls of chalk. Whatever of sternness there may have been is changed into beauty by the thick-blossoming elder and graceful ash, rooted apparently where most needed to make up a picture. Before descending I went a short distance farther to the west, to the edge of the famous landslip. Though prepared for the sight, it took me completely by surprise. You see a huge chasm, in which two or three of our London squares might be placed, with room to spare, formed by the sinking of the solid earth to a

hundred and fifty feet below its former level. Fields and hedges, patches of wood, and an orchard, all went down together; the surface in some places remaining unchanged, except a little tilting up on one side, and the woods are still green and the orchard bears fruit; but here and there a lifeless trunk, stretching its withered branches aloft, remains to testify of the catastrophe. Two cottages which went down at the same time have since been rebuilt, and now stand snugly among the trees. But as a contrast to the verdure the greater part of the chasm is as bare as the desert; nothing but gravel and clay, on which the seasons have not as yet had time to sow grass, fern, or lichen. The lofty cliffs exhibit a variety of colours, ashen gray, rich red, yellow, and brown, which are repeated and strangely intermingled in the heaps of débris at their base, and wherever the bottom is exposed. Indeed, so fresh are the surfaces, that you might suppose the slip had occurred but a few days before, and your idea of the immediate effect of such a convulsion becomes more distinct than it could be were the precipices covered with vegetation. This is seen still more strikingly at the eastern end, where the subsidence having been less regular than elsewhere, large masses of gravel are left in the form of cones, cubes, gables, cylinders, standing in the strangest confusion, leaning this way and that way; some prostrate, others perpendicular, with the circle of turf still green and flourishing on their top, and presenting such an intermingling of warm and

cool colours as is seldom witnessed. And what adds to the singularity of the scene is the bluff left between the chasm and the sea; though somewhat disturbed when the sinking took place, it remained standing, and now serves to mark the original level.

summer.

All this happened in 1839, a year with a very wet Cracks had been observed running parallel with the edge of the cliffs, but no great mischief was apprehended. On the 24th of December the folk at Dowlands heard strange underground grumblings, and noises of heaving and crushing, as though the old earth were getting uneasy, yet not such as to spoil their anticipations of the coming holiday. However, before sunrise on Christmas-day, the noises recommenced, the cracks widened, and a few of the coast-guard passing the spot, saw to their amazement the fields and pastures with which they had long been familiar begin to sink down, at times with a sudden slip, then slowly; here portions dropping through all at once, there others protruded upwards. Now the falling tract heaved as if rocked from below; now a shudder seemed to pass through it, and the adjoining ground trembled. And so the disturbance went on until forty acres, comprehending a space nearly a mile in length and three hundred feet in width, had descended to their present level, and realized to the astonished neighbourhood some of the phenomena of an earthquake. The direction of the chasm is east and west, separated from the sea by an isolated mass about half a mile wide in some places, which was pushed forwards and thrown out of

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